The “Last Mile” Execution Challenge

By Cassie Ebinger

Pasting up your toothbrush with minty fresh Colgate, but falling short of running the bristles over your pearly whites does not result in clean teeth. Slipping into your running shoes and plopping down on the sofa to watch TV doesn’t mean you got your workout in (unfortunately). And of course, buying all the ingredients for a home cooked meal, but never preparing or cooking said ingredients does not miraculously produce a delicious feast.

Like all things in life, to achieve the end result you’re hoping to accomplish, you have to finish the drill.

This is a very real issue that all business owner/operators are also faced with. Even the best designed processes and procedures completely fall flat when not properly rolled-out. We call this the “last mile” execution challenge.

The Challenge

There are several ways the roll-out of procedures can fail between design and execution. The two main pitfalls we see come down to human error and/or over engineering your tech stack.

The Manual Problem

Creating the largest physical presence possible in the field can seem like a great way to gain visibility into each of your locations. But, besides creating a bloated field team, this tends to transfer the pain — you still need to tightly close the loop on what the field team is doing.

The Tech-Centric Problem

Over investing in niche or point solutions can be a huge detriment to your processes. Often times, you end up having someone that may be great at running a store, but struggle to figure out how to use 10, 15, even 20 point solutions for each individual procedure.

Regardless of which way operators have tried to tackle it, the last mile execution problem remains pretty acute for most. This inevitably creates high variability in customer experience and performance across your stores. But, also makes you vulnerable — a single well-publicized bad experience can impact the brand and sales across all locations.

The Solution

So, how to do you ensure the operating procedures you’ve spent valuable time, money, and resources codifying are properly executed on?

Finding a tool that supports all of your processes is key. Streamlining your tech-stack with a best-in-breed mobile operations performance platform allows you to easily roll-out and enforce compliance with the processes that are critical to improving customer experiences and performance across your stores.

Key features to look for in an operations performance solution should include:

Supports all of your processes – A single platform that allows you to roll-out, track, and enforce compliance with all your critical processes. Not just some of them.

A complete picture, from the field to your stores – A holistic view of what’s happening so you’re in a position to quickly diagnose problems and make better decisions.

Easy to use – A powerful tool that also bolsters a simplistic user-experience, ensuring quick adoption and employee appreciation.

Enterprise scale and security – Even for those who are not already enterprise sized, it is important to choose a solution that is designed to scale up in order to support all current/future feature and security requirements.

Whether you’re looking to maintain high brand standards, ensure food safety, or make a big impact with your next promotion or merchandising initiative, finding the right tool to address the “last mile” execution challenge is essential to long-term success.